


Mirrors Upon Empty Space

by JiM



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: AU Mirror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiM/pseuds/JiM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy is the CMO of the I.S.S. Enterprise, flagship of the line, jewel of the Empire’s fleet.  Leonard McCoy also belongs to Captain James Tiberius Kirk.  The story of the deal the two men forge, beginning in the Academy and continuing well into their first missions. A Mirror-verse look at who Kirk and McCoy might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirrors Upon Empty Space

“Focused by mirrors upon empty space” Henry James

 

 

 

Leonard McCoy is that rare thing in the Empire – an honest man in a position of enormous influence and power.  In the common run of things, this would be enough to get him killed very quickly. But the circumstances aren’t common at all. Leonard McCoy is the CMO of the I.S.S. Enterprise, flagship of the line, jewel of the Empire’s fleet.  Leonard McCoy also belongs to Captain James Tiberius Kirk and there is no one in the Empire who can touch him with impunity.  The last person to threaten McCoy’s life was dead less than 2 days later, while McCoy himself still hovered between life and death.  Kirk’s reprisal had been so bloody, so final that no one has even considered touching McCoy or his child since.  What should have been seen as Kirk exposing his greatest weakness has instead become the sharpest and plainest warning he could ever have delivered to his enemies: Leonard McCoy is untouchable.  There have been assassination attempts on Kirk since, but none have come close to McCoy.

 

* * *

 

   
James Tiberius Kirk is the most ruthlessly sane person Leonard McCoy has ever met. While he can be breathtakingly violent, it is never merely for the pleasure of inflicting pain or dominating another. Kirk does not allow his emotions to dictate his actions. That makes him different from just about anyone McCoy knows in Starfleet. He can fake psychopathic well enough to pass; several ‘Fleet psychiatrists have fallen for his act and more than a few fellow cadets. The fact that he can turn it off just as easily has sometimes made McCoy wonder whether the truth is actually the reverse – that Kirk is actually a psychopath with a chameleon’s ability to pass for sane in an already suspect organization.

But he has had a front-row seat and watched Kirk focus single-mindedly on his very sane goals – academic and political supremacy at the Academy, leading to the captaincy of an Imperial Starship.  From there, it is anyone’s guess. 

 

No, that isn’t true.  McCoy will bet that Admiral Pike and Kirk have worked out his career trajectory with a frightening degree of detail.  That they have likely also worked out McCoy’s for him is disturbing but he is more of a realist than he used to be. There is nothing he can do about it that won’t wind up with his life and Joanna’s in ruins around them.  What he has now is tolerable and some parts are actively good.  This is more than he once could have hoped for.  That he whores himself out to James Kirk to retain it all is a necessary evil.

 

Leonard McCoy likes to think of himself as a sane man, too.

 

 

* * *

 

They met, predictably enough, during one of McCoy’s weekend shifts at Starfleet Medical.  He took the undesirable shifts because they paid more and he desperately needed the money.  Unfortunately, they also tended to be more fraught with incident, those night shifts during weekends and holidays and exam periods.  While Starfleet ruled its cadets with an iron hand, out of class or duty hours, they were free to get into as much trouble as possible, thereby weeding out the weak, stupid and slow.  Kirk was none of these, but there he was bleeding onto a biobed in McCoy’s next cubicle.  A long gash trailed down the top of his forearm and he had a sharp grin on his face.

 

“Cadet McCoy,” he had said, his tone almost wild with good humor.

 

McCoy had looked up from his tricorder and wondered what the hell made the man so damned happy. “That’s Dr. McCoy to you.  Now hold that arm up.”

 

Kirk’s grin dimmed a little and his expression became more calculating but he said nothing as he held out the bleeding limb.  McCoy’s fingers were deft and sure as he probed the wound and tested for ligament damage.

 

“This your dominant hand?”

 

“Why?” Kirk asked suspiciously.

 

McCoy huffed with annoyance. “If this is your trigger hand, you’ll need a lot more nerve regen right now than you will if it’s not.  If this isn’t your dominant hand, I’d rather let most of the damage heal naturally.”

 

Kirk’s eyes had narrowed at McCoy’s tone. “You know who I am, I assume?”

 

“Yup.  That’s why I know you’ll need your trigger hand in perfect order sooner than later. So – which is it?”  McCoy hadn’t even looked up at the implied threat, just kept laying out tools and loading a hypospray with a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

 

“I’m ambidextrous.”

 

“Of course you are.”  Somehow, he managed to make even that simple agreement sound like an insult. 

 

McCoy administered the hypo with a quick press before Kirk could even dodge.  The man’s good hand came up and seized McCoy’s wrist in a fierce grip.

 

“Most people would be a hell of a lot nicer to me.”  Kirk voice was soft and dangerous.

 

“Kirk, it doesn’t seem to matter whether people are nice to you or not.  Once you don’t have a use for them, they most often wind up dead anyway.  So why should I bother being ‘nice to you’ when it won’t make a damned bit of difference to me?”

 

Kirk had actually blinked at that, his grip loosening slightly.  McCoy yanked his hand away and turned away to pick up the regenerator.

 

“What I don’t understand is why you’re here at all.  You’ve got Admiral Pike’s personal physician to check you out any time you have a sniffle.  So what are you doing down here at midnight on a Saturday night?”

 

McCoy began running the regenerator up and down the wound, carefully eyeing the cellular repair data coming up on the screen.  If he felt the blue-eyed stare on the side of his face, he gave no sign.

 

“What would it take for you to be nice to me, Doctor McCoy?”  Kirk’s voice had grown even softer.

 

“I can’t think of anything,” McCoy replied shortly, eyes still on his work.  Without looking, he grabbed a swab and wiped away some blood from the gaping edges of the slash.

 

Kirk reached out and pulled McCoy’s chin up so their gazes met.  Then he ran a single finger down the thick scar that cut down the doctor’s cheek, just under his right eye.  “Nothing?”

 

“I’m not into men,” McCoy said shortly, tossing his head to dislodge Kirk’s hand.

 

“Yes, I know.  But women haven’t been all that good for you, now have they?” And Kirk had tapped his own right cheekbone and grinned.

 

McCoy had stared at him, then backed away a step, turning off the regenerator.  “Why not save us both a lot of trouble and tell me what you’re really doing here, Kirk?”

 

But now that Kirk had his full and undivided attention, he seemed unwilling to come to the point.  “McCoy, Leonard H., Cadet, Medical Doctor, trauma surgeon. Age 29, divorced, father of one, only son of David McCoy, younger son of the Clan McCoy Southeastern branch. A poor clan, but respectable and well-regarded in Imperial circles.  Intelligence scored well into genius range until about three years ago when your then-wife’s clan began sabotaging your test results.  Darnell is an upstart clan but wealthy.  Your marriage to Jocelyn Darnell was an attempt to merge the powerbases in your family’s county between the old gentry and the new money. It didn’t work.”

 

“Done your homework, I see.”

 

Kirk blinked slowly, looking for all the world like a sleepy, contented cat in a sunbeam.

 

“So, how much did Joss’ family pay you?  It must have been a bundle for you to slash your own arm to get in here.”  McCoy’s hand slowly reached behind him for a laser scalpel; a ludicrous weapon but his only option for self-defense.  If he called for help, he knew no one would come. Kirk would have seen to that.

 

Kirk’s grin widened a fraction.  “I’m not here to assassinate you, McCoy.  The Darnells are shit and I don’t do contract work.”

 

McCoy’s grasp on the laser scalpel didn’t loosen.

 

“How did you know I’d cut my own arm?” Kirk asked with real curiosity in his voice.

 

“Angle of the cut; also, you went from the wrist toward your shoulder.  If you’d gotten that cut in a fight, the deepest part of the wound would be at the top of the slice, then get shallower.”

 

“They said you were the best.”

 

“Thanks,” McCoy said drily. “Now – what the hell do you want from me?”

 

“I told you – I want you to be nice to me.”

 

“And I told you that I don’t do men. Not even pretty ones with dangerous reputations and powerful mentors.”  McCoy put down the scalpel and picked up the regenerator again.

 

Kirk allowed him to work on his arm for several quiet moments, then asked,

“What if I could get you one weekend a month with your daughter and two weeks during the summer? No supervision and anywhere you want on the planet.”

 

McCoy carefully placed the machine on the tray table.  If Kirk noticed that his hands were shaking, he made no comment.

 

“Can you do that?”

 

Kirk nodded.

 

“And in return?” McCoy’s jaw was clenching.

 

“You’re mine. Exclusively.”

 

“For how long?”

 

“As long as I want.” 

 

McCoy shook his head. “Nope.  The first time I don’t get access to my kid, the deal’s off.”

 

Kirk began to swing his legs and a smug grin was blooming on his face. He knew he had McCoy now. “Deal.”

 

“My daughter stays out of this. She’s no part of it. You don’t touch her, you don’t talk to her, you don’t ever let her know you exist.”

 

“Agreed.”

 

McCoy looked at him searchingly, then swallowed and held out his hand.

 

Kirk’s grip was firm but not unduly so. He had no need of proving his mastery by crushing McCoy’s hand or yanking him into a biting kiss.  The sudden slump to the doctor’s shoulders was proof enough that he had won.

 

“It’s not all bad, McCoy, you’ll see.  Hell, I bet I can help you get your Astrometrics grade up to something decent.” 

 

For just a moment, James Kirk grinned and looked like a sunny-faced college boy from some far-off universe where good grades and a date on Saturday night were his biggest concerns.  But his grin turned sharp again and his eyes darkened enough to make McCoy shiver. 

 

“The sex will be good, too.”

 

“I’ve heard it before,” McCoy snapped. “It’s an arrangement, Kirk, nothing more.”

 

Kirk’s blue gaze scanned down then up his body before looking him straight in the eye.  “It’s more than that, McCoy. We’re going to do great things together, you and me.  Just wait and see.”

 

* * *

 

The surprising thing is - the sex is good.  Kirk is athletic, enthusiastic and inventive.  More than that, his tastes, while catholic, are fairly unremarkable.  He is neither a sadist nor an emotional dominant.  They sleep together twice a week – no more, no less.  Very little of what McCoy had feared about their liaison has come to pass; he has not been humiliated nor exposed to the ridicule of the student body as Kirk’s pet.  There has been little pain beyond that he expected from the first few penetrations and a few bites, excusable within the heat of passion.  And for some inscrutable reason, Kirk is passionate about him.

 

What McCoy had not expected was to actually enjoy himself on occasion.  Behind closed doors, Kirk relaxes some and reveals a quirky sense of humor.  They spend a fair amount of time actually studying although McCoy is reasonably certain that much of what Kirk is studying is not included in the standard Starfleet curriculum.  He receives thick packets of data from Admiral Pike several times a week which he is unusually careful about.

 

Kirk makes good on his promise and McCoy’s grades in Astrometrics rise as dramatically as the rest of his marks.  Having a quiet and safe space in which to work is the greater part of the reason for his academic improvement.

 

After the first week, McCoy had arrived back at his dorm room one afternoon to find it completely stripped and one of Kirk’s goons waiting patiently to conduct him to his new room in Kirk’s suite.  Even as he grumbles about Kirk’s high-handed ways, McCoy sees the benefit to himself of no longer having to guard himself against his roommate’s constant attempts to steal his coursework and what few valuables he has been able to retain.  He can sleep more deeply and has to take fewer graveyard shifts to cover his room and board.

 

In return, he helps drill Kirk in the basic physiology of each of the major races of the Empire and its enemies. After all, it is only intelligent planning to know all of the possible ways to disable an enemy or former ally without a weapon or imposing fatal damage.  He also devotes some part of his newly acquired free time to learning more about the mechanics of gay sex and pleasing a male partner.  Leonard McCoy is nothing if not a man who keeps his bargains.

 

If, during that first delirious weekend visit he has his daughter all to himself, he presses the bite bruises Kirk has left on him, it is only to remind himself that everything good has its price.

 

* * *

Of course, as soon as they both graduate at the tops of their respective tracks, Kirk insures that they are assigned to the same ship.  While McCoy is briefly technically senior to Kirk, the young lieutenant’s star is clearly on a meteoric rise.  Several officers senior to Kirk suffer debilitating or fatal accidents.  Others develop urgent desires to serve on other vessels or take lateral moves out of Kirk’s direct path.  Several medical staff suffer the same mysterious mishaps until McCoy tackles Kirk about it.  Loudly, in the mess hall.

 

“I don’t need your damned patronage. Just leave them alone.  I’ll advance on my own merits!”

 

“Keep your voice down, Bones,” Kirk had answered evenly before taking a long drink of his coffee. “You’ve never complained about my patronage before.”

 

“What’s the matter, Kirk?  Your pet decide he wants off the sugar teat?” 

 

The smirking Irishman is vaguely familiar to McCoy from the Academy.  Finnegan, one of Kirk’s sometime hangers-on.  McCoy wears a dagger in his sash but no one’s ever seen him draw it.  It could lead an unobservant man to conclude that McCoy is an easy target.  Apparently Finnegan hadn’t hung around Kirk’s gang long enough to learn that baiting McCoy was a bad idea.

 

“Private conversation, Finnegan. Go away.”  Kirk never takes his eyes from McCoy’s hot gaze.

 

“Now then, Jimmy boy, how private can it be if your pretty toy’s yowling can be heard all the way to Deck 15?”

 

“Fuck off,” McCoy growls. 

 

Finnegan’s hand lands on McCoy’s shoulder and yanks him halfway out of his seat before he backhands the doctor, knocking him across the table. Utensils scatter and clatter to the floor, almost too loud for the onlookers to hear Finnegan’s hissed, “You better keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to your betters, McCoy.”

 

While all eyes are on Kirk and wondering when he is going to make a move to protect his property, almost no one sees what’s in McCoy’s hand as he pushes himself back upright.  Finnegan has about two seconds to smirk at McCoy before his mouth is opening in a high-pitched scream.  He stares in horror at the fork sticking out of his chest, high up and stuck nearly into his shoulder.  There is a nice nerve cluster there and McCoy twists the fork lightly, just to watch Finnegan drop to the floor and writhe.

 

McCoy stares down at him impassively then says into the near-silence, “Don’t talk to me again, Finnegan.  Don’t even think about talking to Kirk - ever.  Got it?” 

 

He prods the fork with the toe of his boot before pinning the wounded man to the deck under his heavy foot.  When Finnegan groans something like assent, McCoy just walks away and goes back to retrieve his dinner tray before sitting back down across from Kirk. The buzz of conversation resumes suddenly and Kirk merely nods at him and takes another gulp of coffee. There is a hectic flush in McCoy’s cheeks and a lock of his dark hair has fallen across his pale forehead. 

 

“Let’s go. I want to fuck you.”

 

McCoy snorts. “We’re fighting, idiot.”

 

“We can fight later. C’mon.”

 

The rest of the diners in the mess hall watch out of the corners of their eyes as McCoy sighs theatrically, then shakes his head and gets to his feet.  “You know, connecting sex with violence often has an Oedipal component…”

 

“Yeah, yeah, Bones. Everyone knows I have Mommy issues,” comes floating back as the two men walk out of the hall just a touch too close together.

 

 

* * *

 

The story becomes legend before the end of the next shift, especially when McCoy returns to duty with the clear imprint of teeth along the line of tendon down the right side of his neck.  It reaches mythic status when it is noted that Kirk wears matching bruising for the next three days.

 

Medical personnel turn over less frequently after that and there is a certain amount of gratitude paid to McCoy due to that fact.  By the time Kirk becomes captain, McCoy has fought only one duel and the CMO, Puri, takes voluntary retirement.  Since McCoy actually likes Dr. Puri, he is relieved not to have to kill him just to advance James Kirk’s grand scheme.

 

Kirk has also not needed to kill the officer above him in order to gain the rank he has coveted since the Academy.  The First officer is a Vulcan, rare enough in Starfleet. He is also a man who has risen to his position through skill alone.

 

Spock comes to Kirk one night and proposes to serve as his first officer, just as he serves the current captain, a well-connected but uninspired officer named Singh.  He is more than capable of out-dueling Kirk and might even out-maneuver him politically, but he prefers to retain his current rank and position as it leaves him time to pursue his scientific interests.

 

Kirk cautiously accepts his offer and confirms him in his post as first officer once Captain Singh has met his long-anticipated tragic accident.  The Enterprise gradually begins to receive better assignments as their performance becomes more and more respectable with each successful mission.  Kirk and Spock work well together; they keep the junior officers in line and just terrified enough to do their jobs with maximum efficiency.

 

Spock and McCoy develop what might almost be termed a friendship if one of the participants weren’t dedicated to an obscure splinter philosophy that demanded he demonstrate no emotion.  Between the two of them, they manage to collect most of the useful information on the ship.  Spock’s fiercely ambitious human bond-mate, Uhura, is the source of the rest of the necessary intelligence that Kirk needs to cement his captaincy and his rise within Starfleet.

 

Uhura’s ambition is not to command her own starship, however.  Rather, she intends to be the first to crack each new encrypted Romulan and Klingon code they pick up.  She burns to be the first to dissect the unknown language of each new race they encounter and subjugate. Her scholarly papers comparing and contrasting alien morphologies have only begun to garner her the accolades for which she yearns.   Devoted service to a captain like Kirk is her best path toward achieving her goals and Kirk provides her with just enough opportunity and free time to pursue her passions.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

In fact, no one even mentions McCoy in less than respectful terms any more.  The last lieutenant to do so, the one that sneeringly referred to McCoy as “the Captain’s Woman” in the Mess, had been allowed to bleed out from a gut wound sustained on his very next away mission.  McCoy may rarely draw his dagger but he is not without his own weapons.  If a crew-member wants to assure him- or herself of the best possible medical care, he is careful to be nothing but respectful of the doctor and his staff.  No one wishes to take the risk that anesthesia or painkillers might be considered optional treatments the next time they wind up in Sickbay.

 

Neither Kirk’s opponents nor his allies understand the bond between the two men.  McCoy is handsome enough; tall, broad-shouldered, fine green eyes and thick dark hair.  But there are plenty of beautiful men in the galaxy and many of them have more malleable tempers.  It’s not even that Kirk restricts himself to McCoy – any number of gorgeous women have graced his bed, as well, but never for more than one night and Kirk always returns to McCoy.

 

It’s not that McCoy is the only doctor Kirk can trust, either.  Between his own ability to command loyalty or at least reasonably trustworthy service and the halo effect of his mentor, Christopher Pike, Kirk has had little reason to fear the few times he has needed a physician’s care.  Pike’s own doctor, Boyce, had charge of all of Kirk’s medical needs for years before McCoy arrived on the scene.  But the mystery remains: James Kirk will move all of the heavens and blow up any number of small earths for Leonard McCoy.

 

Leonard McCoy doesn't understand it either.  He has only asked once, after the first time.

 

“I just don’t get it. Why me?”

 

Kirk had just looked at him, assessing him coolly.  Then he had wheeled abruptly and crossed the room to the shelf full of delicate glass knick-knacks.  They had always obscurely bothered McCoy, the gleaming crystal so out of place in Kirk’s otherwise Spartan quarters.

 

He picked up one of the simpler pieces on the bottom shelf, a graceful old-fashioned vase.  Its lines declared it to be pre-Imperium and McCoy vaguely wondered how much it was worth on the collectors’ market.

 

Kirk held it gently in his hand, allowing the lights of his cabin to slip down the curves of the piece.  His glance met McCoy’s for a moment, as if to make certain the doctor was watching.  Then, fast as a serpent strike, Kirk raised the vase and smashed it down upon the edge of the counter beside him.

 

McCoy heard himself crying out at the wanton destruction of an object of such innocent beauty.  He saw Kirk’s knife-edged grin before realizing that the vase was still whole in the captain’s hand.  The cabin rang with the sound of distressed crystal, but the vase remained undamaged.

 

“Amazing stuff, Antaran crystal.  Looks like it would shatter if a butterfly landed on it.  But it takes a hell of a lot of punishment and always remains exactly as it is… beautiful.”  Kirk turned away and put the vase gently back into its place.

 

“I don’t understand,” McCoy said.

 

Kirk came close, then ran one finger down the long scar on McCoy’s cheek. 

 

“Yes, you do,” he said softly. 

 

Then he stepped around the doctor and left his quarters.

 

 

* * *

 

The long jagged scar that runs vertically down his left cheekbone directly under his eye to his jawbone has never been healed.  A simple treatment or two could leave his cheek as smooth as a boy’s again but McCoy won’t allow it.  Kirk has only offered to pay for the cosmetic surgery once; the particular curve of the doctor’s sneer in response had been unprecedented.  Kirk had waited until the end of classes, then dragged the doctor off to a quiet restaurant with a good bar and excellent privacy fields. 

 

He refrained from bringing it up until after they had both eaten, then ordered the one bourbon McCoy allows himself per night.  He knows that McCoy is horrified at the idea of turning into his father, a drunken but politically well-connected shuttle-crash of a man who had killed half a townful of patients with his alcoholic fumblings before someone had finally put him down. 

 

Kirk doesn’t know who it was, but their actions had resulted in McCoy being free to finally get the hell out of Georgia and wind up in Starfleet.  He thinks he may owe that unknown benefactor a favor someday, especially if McCoy turns out to be as talented a CMO as he is a surgeon and cadet.  But Kirk does not like not knowing things about McCoy; it gives him an edgy feeling, as if there is an unknown assailant waiting in the shadows. He prefers to know all of his enemies and to keep tabs on them.

 

“Tell me,” he ordered simply.

 

McCoy doesn’t even pretend not to understand.  There was remarkably little pretense in their relationship and never had been.  Kirk had wanted McCoy, offered him the safe space and security he needed to excel and, in return, got much of McCoy’s free time. 

 

“My wife.  I came home from rounds early and found her in bed with my best friend.”

 

McCoy takes a sip of his drink, then continues, staring sightlessly at the raised scar that runs diagonally across the back of his right hand.  “Cue the standard sordid scene.  But while Clay and I were cursing at each other, Jocelyn was preparing a little surprise for me. The only reason I’m not dead is because Clay shouted.” A bitter grin twisted McCoy’s lips. “I don’t think he ever intended to see me dead.  He was genuinely shocked when she went for me with the dagger.

 

“She nearly got my eye; she was going for my back, but I turned.  Her clan’s money got my internship pulled the very next morning.  Turns out they were the ones behind my trial results getting contaminated and my research getting stolen.  She must have been planning it for a while.”

 

“So that’s why you’re so paranoid about your research trial data!”

 

Kirk feels pleased to have fit another piece of the puzzle that is Leonard McCoy into place.  McCoy had often refused to leave the lab while running results, preferring to sleep beside his lab bench.  At least, he had until James Kirk had taken him under his protection.  One of the unexpected perks of bedding Kirk had been the placing of his personal security to stand guard over McCoy or his work in the labs.  That this frees McCoy up for nights in Kirk’s bed is the stated reason.  That McCoy’s grades have shot up to the top of his track now that he is no longer exhausted and no one has the opportunity to sabotage his work is another positive result.

 

“She took everything I had, then.  My kid, my career, my land – she left me with nothing. I think she even has an option on harvesting my organs if I die.  All I’ve got left to my name are my bones.”

 

“Why leave the scar, then?”

 

McCoy smiles then, a cold, knowing smile that could chill even James Kirk, a man hand-raised by Captain Christopher Pike.

 

“So I won’t ever forget what I learned that morning.” 

 

He stops speaking and won’t say anything more.  But Kirk knows what McCoy learned that morning: trust no one.  A good lesson for a man in the Imperium, especially one planning on a career in Starfleet.  That he shared the story at all, let alone with James Kirk, merely underscores that he has not yet learned the lesson fully.  He should never have handed over such a useful weapon without a fight.

 

After that, Kirk finds himself tracing the darkened line of that scar on McCoy’s cheek.  He has conceived a certain fondness for it.  If he calls McCoy “Bones” sometimes, it is merely an oblique reference to their conversation that night. The tiny flinch McCoy gives every time he hears it is unintended but a useful reminder of where he could be, if not for Kirk’s influence and protection.

 

* * *

 

Neither of them had learned one lesson well enough, however.  Never count an enemy out and gone until you have seen the corpse for yourself.  In fact, it is best to sink your dagger into it a few times, as well.

 

The incident happens nearly five years into their arrangement.  The terms have been modified to adapt to their shipboard schedules.  Some kind of pressure had been exerted on Jocelyn to allow McCoy to see his daughter every time the Enterprise reaches Earth or her environs, whether school is in session or not.  He is now accorded a full month of uninterrupted time with his daughter during the summer.  In return, Kirk requires only that McCoy completely abandon the CMO’s assigned quarters onboard and spend every night in the captain’s bed.  With their shift schedules and the increasingly ludicrous situations the crew seems to find itself in, they do a lot more sleeping in that bed than anything else. McCoy has no complaints.

 

McCoy’s dealings with Jocelyn Darnell have been through lawyers for the past four years, though he sometimes sees her through a window when Joanna is dropped off or picked up.  This time, though, Jocelyn has requested a few minutes of his time. The wording is so polite, so distant and cool, that his naturally suspicious nature does not come into play.

 

He walks Joanna to Jocelyn’s vehicle, his own standing ready just down the street.  Well, it’s Kirk’s, or possibly Pike’s, he’s never known the boundaries of that relationship.  He is always conveyed to and from these visits by the same team, a driver and two bodyguards. He barely knows their names and has never exchanged more than perfunctory greetings with any of them.

 

Jocelyn looks well; it’s obvious that Clay is able to keep her in the style to which she has always wished to become accustomed.  There are rare gems in her ears and a sizable diamond on her left wrist cuff.  It surprises him that Treadway hasn’t provided her with any bodyguards; a woman of her status could reasonably expect a showy pair of mercenaries to escort her everywhere. Hell, he has his unnamed trio and he’s just Kirk’s pet.

 

Jocelyn gets right to the point.

 

“I want you to sign this.”

 

She shoves a PADD through the car window  toward him.  He scans it and notes that it is a short legal document which will allow Joanna to be adopted by Treadway as his primary heir. The McCoy clan will renounce all claim to the child for a significant amount of money. Hell, it’s enough to keep most of them from ever having to work again.

 

McCoy goes hot for a split second, then absolutely cold before he finds his voice.  He sees his daughter staring at him from the back seat; she is too much like him and knows that there is something badly wrong.  He works hard to say calmly, “No.”

 

“Leonard, it’s a very good offer. You’d be a fool not to take it. Clay wants her as his own daughter.  You know the kind of opportunities Treadway can offer her.”

 

But he can see that it’s not about the so-called opportunities for Joanna’s education and advancement at all. It’s about Jocelyn securing her claim on Clay Treadway, a mid-level bureaucrat with lots of money and influence and a very low sperm motility rate.  He looks at his daughter again, the little girl who had been laughing and chattering at him just half an hour past. Her face is now pale and set; her head shakes back and forth just once, a tiny motion.

 

“I’m not sellin’ my daughter, Jocelyn!” He thrusts the padd back at her.  “Not for all the money Clay can toss at me.  And you know my mother’d say the same thing.”

 

“Yes, I do. She already did.”  Jocelyn frowns in the understated way she has perfected to keep her makeup intact.  “Clay offered her the deed to the old McCoy spread and she still said no. I had hoped you’d be more reasonable.  I guess I’m just doomed to disappointment where you’re concerned.”

 

McCoy makes a note to comm his mother later and congratulate her.  They don’t see eye to eye on anything, really, except Joanna.  He certainly doesn’t like the old bitch and she is almost as disappointed in him as Jocelyn claims to be, but at least she knows the value of family.

 

“Clan McCoy doesn’t sell its children.  Never has and never will. If Clay Treadway wants to adopt Joanna, he’ll have to do it over my dead body.”

 

“Proud words coming from a man who’s selling his own ass to the son of a gutless traitor and an Imperial whore.”

 

That flash of heat followed by the wash of ice through his blood keeps him from reaching for his dagger.  He doesn’t look at his daughter because he doesn’t want to see her face.  He wonders, for just a moment, what it is that Kirk has on Jocelyn that he was able to force her to accept these visitations.  He also wonders if he can get Kirk to tell him what it is – for the very first time since he found her in Clay’s bed, he truly and deeply wants to make her suffer. 

 

But now is not the time. Not with Joanna looking on.  He will bide his time and wait for his revenge.  So he says nothing, simply steps back from the car and waves her off with nothing more than, “Goodbye, Jocelyn.”

 

Her lip curling and her nostril flaring in well-contained rage, she closes the window and puts the car in motion.  He is just turning toward his own vehicle when he hears his daughter scream. 

 

McCoy is punched off his feet by the rear of Jocelyn’s car.  He sees his own security team begin to run toward him as phaser blasts come from the sides of the street toward them.  Well, that answers where Jocelyn’s security team was – shooting at him from covered positions.

 

He hits the ground and bounces once before hearing the vehicle coming at him again.  His daughter is still screaming and there are now male shouts joining in the mix as something agonizing happens to his left leg.  He comes to rest in a crumpled heap in the middle of the street, wondering if he will ever learn not to turn his back on Jocelyn Darnell.

 

After that, there is nothing linear for him to hold onto.  He sees his driver  kneeling over him and exchanging phaser fire with someone at one point.  He thinks he remembers his daughter screaming for him and clutching his hand with bruising force.  He may remember Jocelyn’s screams and the smell of burning aluminum.  He does remember feeling grateful for the cool moment of non-feeling as he is beamed somewhere.  The press of a hypospray against his throat is pure bliss and he knows nothing else.

 

The next time he is actually conscious, he wakes to the tickle of his daughter’s hair against his nose.  Slowly, he sorts out the data coming in – he is in his own room in the Captain’s suite.  The quiet hums and beeps of medical monitoring equipment tell him that he is recovering from something pretty catastrophic, the memory of which is teasing around the edges of his mind.  Joanna is sleeping beside him, her head tucked into the side of his neck.  The sweet little-girl scent of her is nearly lost in the competing aromas of medication, the metallic tang that is unmistakably the Enterprise herself and the tease of hot coffee.

 

 

Coffee.  He cuts his eyes to the left and sees the Captain seated at McCoy’s own desk, reading something on the terminal and sipping at one of his endless cups of coffee.

 

Joanna is tucked against his side, James Kirk is watching over his drugged sleep and the two halves of his mortgaged life have come together over his broken body.  His mouth was dry before and his throat tight, but it’s only getting worse.  A monitor begins beeping an urgent rhythm that calls Kirk’s attention away from the screen.

 

“You’re awake,” he states calmly, in a voice pitched low enough to not waken the sleeping child at McCoy’s side.  “Calm down.”

 

“How long?” McCoy rasps.  He tries to breathe a little more deeply and the beeping stops.

 

Kirk doesn’t answer until he has slipped a tube of nutrient gel between McCoy’s chapped lips and squeezed a tiny amount into his mouth.  The icy gel runs down his throat, soothing and moistening as it goes. 

 

“Two days.”

 

“How bad?”  The way Kirk won’t meet his gaze has him rattled.

 

“Broken pelvis, lacerated liver, two broken legs, crushed ankle, arterial bleeding, broken wrist and elbow, concussion, bruises, contusions, minor lacerations and a chipped front tooth.”  Kirk lists his injuries in a calm voice.  Too calm, McCoy thinks.  Kirk has a tendency to react poorly when someone tries to take something away from him.  Jocelyn Treadway has interfered with Kirk’s well-laid plans and McCoy has seen what happens when someone interferes with Kirk.

 

“What’s wrong?” He starts to wonder if he’s crippled or maimed so badly that Kirk has lost whatever interest he had in him.  If that happens, he wonders if their political ties will be enough to maintain their alliance, to maintain his protected status.

 

“Nothing’s wrong, Bones.  You’re healing nicely. M’Benga says you’ll be up and around again in two more days.”  Kirk sounds good-humored and _pleasant_ but he still won’t actually look at McCoy.  He is behaving as if he were nervous which is bizarre and frankly terrifies McCoy. That tell-tale monitor begins its idiotic pulsing again.

 

“What did you do?’ he whispers.

 

Kirk doesn’t reply, just shakes his head and nods down at Joanna.  He places the tube of gel back against McCoy’s lips and dribbles more into his mouth.  He doesn’t stop until the entire tube is gone and McCoy’s eyes are drooping.

He straightens up and begins to step away from the bed, but pauses and says crisply,

 

“I broke our deal with regards to Joanna, but I thought you’d prefer to have her nearby and out of reach of either the Treadways or the Darnells.

 

“I’m open to renegotiation.”

 

McCoy just shakes his head. After five years, he has come to understand James Kirk a little better.  Merely being a member of the McCoy clan has already introduced 8 year old Joanna McCoy to some very unsavory facts of life.  Her ties to both Darnell and Treadway had merely accelerated the educational process. 

 

Kirk continues speaking, words coming out a little faster. His bright blue gaze finally fixes itself on McCoy’s face for a moment before slipping off to stare at the far wall.

 

“I’m prepared to let you have that pretty little nurse who keeps lingering in your office after shift is over. ”

 

Oh. 

 

Christine Chapel is a sweet morsel and could hold her own, both in and out of his bed.  He misses breasts and the taste of a woman’s sex on his lips for hours after he’s left her.  He likes Christine, wants her, but he is still fundamentally an honest man. 

 

He shakes his head again.  McCoy is too tired to do this now, dammit, and his baby girl could wake up and overhear at any moment.  He opens his mouth, but Kirk is talking once more.

 

“Not Chapel?  Huh, I would have thought she’d appeal to you.  What about…”

 

“Deal stands,” McCoy’s harsh whisper brings Kirk’s babble to a stop. “Not your fault.”

 

Kirk stares at him as if he’s insane and McCoy is wondering if he might be, too. He should be taking advantage of this opportunity and making the most of Kirk’s moment of weakness but he can’t.  He knows that, even though James Kirk is one of the most dangerous men in the Imperium, Joanna is still safer with him than she is with her own mother.  At the very least, if he ever decides to kill McCoy, Kirk will make certain that Joanna won’t be there to witness it.

 

The icy blue eyes thaw a little as they stare down at him.  “You’re a bad negotiator, Bones.”

 

“You’re an idiot,” McCoy slurs, exhaustion dragging him away from this stupid conversation.

 

His last impressions are the hard grip Kirk has on his unbroken forearm and the moist breath of his daughter against his throat.

 

 

* * *

Days later, when he has finally returned to active duty and Joanna is ensconced in a room of her own next door, McCoy is just wrapping his sash around his waist when Kirk tosses a cloth-wrapped package onto the bed beside him.  He pointedly does not watch as McCoy opens it to find a beautifully crafted matching set of wrist braces.  The intricate geometric pattern has been created with thin slivers and disks of polished bone set into very fine-grained black leather cuffs.

 

McCoy slowly pulls them on and fastens the silver buckles.  When he looks up, Kirk is staring at him, heat in his eyes.

 

McCoy holds up one wrist.  “Jocelyn?” he asks.

 

“Amongst others,” Kirk answers with a toothy grin.  “Clan Darnell looks good on you, Bones.”

 

That is all Kirk ever says on the subject.  When McCoy does a little research on his own, however, it is to discover that the Darnell clan has been decimated.  Clay Treadway, interestingly, is still among the living.  Kirk must have decided he had nothing to do with it. 

 

Joanna now wears a little torque with a large diamond in it that he is sure he last saw on Jocelyn’s left wrist. She also wears a dainty poison-tipped dagger with a lovely bone handle on her belt and calls James Kirk “Uncle Captain.”  When she begins a private weekly correspondence with Admiral Christopher Pike, he wants to vomit.  Or weep.

 

But he is a more practical man than he used to be; he can see that his little girl has her mother’s ambitions, if not her cold heart.  She is being trained in the fine arts of survival, groomed to excel in all of the arenas in which she might find herself.  She will be a leader, loyal to Kirk and Pike and appropriately grateful for the opportunities they have given her.

 

She never once mentions his arrangement with Kirk, behaving as if he found himself here by choice.  But then, hadn’t he chosen this freely?  He had needed protection and patronage, some way to support and raise his daughter and he had found it.

 

He’s got what he needed and what he wanted and the price hasn’t been too steep.  In fact, he has been revenged on the Darnell Clan in a most thorough way.  That he was unconscious at the time in no way dims his enjoyment of their destruction. He stares down at his wrist braces and grins a little.  No, the price has been more than worth the return.

 

* * *

 

McCoy knows about Kirk’s leadership principle of finding out what the people he wants need and giving it to them.  Not what they want, he had been quick to insist, but what they need.  He had developed this principle early, not long after Tarsus and coming under Pike’s protection.

 

People had a lot of wants and desires, he noticed.  Many were powerful; indeed, people would kill for the person or power or wealth they wanted.  But desires could be sated and, once sated, the provider would be back at square one.  He would have to determine or create a new desire and fulfill that in order to keep the person under control. This seemed inefficient to him.  Not to mention those few people he had seen who had been able to throw off the lure of the filled desire and act independently, sometimes ruining carefully laid plans.

 

Needs, however, were far more powerful than mere desires.  Everyone knew about the basic hierarchy of human needs – air, food, shelter, water.  Their manipulation was the very cornerstone of power and empire.  But Kirk had observed that many people had personal needs, people or things that transcended mere desires and were as necessary to the useful functioning of the person in question as air or water.  So Kirk had begun experimenting at a young age with determining what a person needed and securing it for them in return for their loyal service. 

 

His theory had borne ample fruit.  As an imperial starship captain, he now commanded one of the best crews in the galaxy and had little to fear from his underlings.  The important ones were too well aware that he alone provided what they needed and the unimportant ones were kept in line by those for whom he provided.

 

Finding what McCoy had needed was simplicity itself.  At the Academy, all he had needed was secure space in which to study and research and simple protection from jealous colleagues or importunate suitors.  That had been enough to secure McCoy’s unstinting medical attention and occasional company.  Arranging for McCoy to see his daughter twice a month and half the summer had guaranteed the man’s presence in his bed and at his side for the foreseeable future. Giving him his revenge against the entire Darnell clan has cemented his loyalty to James Kirk.  That loyalty guarantees that it will be Leonard McCoy who stands at his side as Imperial Consort when he ascends the throne.

 

What Kirk will never tell anyone is that his theory works as well on himself as it does on anyone else.  He has always had the spark of genius; what he didn’t have, before Pike, was the discipline.  Pike had been able to teach him the discipline necessary to achieve his goals, but even he had not been able to instill deep within Kirk the _desire_ to shape his entire life to that discipline.

 

There has always been within him a core of wildness, a tearing desire to tell the powers that be to go fuck themselves, no matter the cost to himself or his long-term goals.  It has always reared up within him, fighting to get out, shrieking and clawing, starving for something that he could never name.  Too many times in his youth it almost got him killed.  Even today, as a powerful man within the Imperium, a rising star and a man known for his self-discipline, it sings siren’s songs to him of freedom and the independence of chaos.  He had, however, finally found the thing it needed, what he needed, in order to keep himself subordinated to his higher goals.  Leonard McCoy.

 

More specifically, his love for Leonard McCoy.  Somewhere, deep inside of him, where that voice shrieks and whispers, there are hopeless love songs sung.  Melting desire and an alien tenderness that took him years to name are kept carefully in check by being provided with what he needs.  He needs Leonard McCoy, an object for his deepest longings, a man worthy of love, lust, affection and deepest admiration. 

 

So he has given himself Leonard McCoy.  That McCoy doesn’t love him isn’t important.  That is a complication neither of them needs.  By giving in to this single voracious need within, Kirk is able to keep that wild core from destroying everything he has worked for simply to prove its independence.  So he has verified his theory of leadership on the most difficult subject of all: himself, a genius completely aware of the method of control and still compelled to accept being led.  It is his triumph.

 

* * *

 McCoy knows that Kirk loves him.  It took him years to see it and longer still to accept it.  Nothing about their arrangement was ever supposed to be about love.  The companionship, the trust, the mutual aid – that was the deal. They’ve both kept to it, as honorably as any two men in this Imperium could. 

 

Once or twice, late at night, McCoy has awakened to hear Kirk – no, Jim – talking to him. Secrets he could never say aloud, never admit to in the light of day.  He says, in a grave desperate voice, all the things McCoy had once heard from Jocelyn Darnell.  McCoy believes them this time, too.

 

Sometimes, his hearts aches a little at the thought that he can never feel for Jim Kirk what the other man does.  His heart has been too broken; the only part that’s still whole belongs entirely to his daughter.

 

James Kirk is too different from what McCoy always wanted.  He can’t love him in any fashion that can ever match the deep, ragged whispers he sometimes hears when he’s half-asleep.  All McCoy can do is watch his back, tell him the truth when he’s being an idiot, doctor him when he’s sick or hurt and warm his bed when he’s not. 

 

McCoy was once in love, totally, completely, soul-rendingly in love, and it nearly destroyed him.  But being loved in that same way has saved his life, made his career, given him his revenge and returned his daughter to him. So, while he can’t ever love James Kirk, he does his best to honor their arrangement and to never give him cause to regret it. 

 

It seems to be enough for both of them.


End file.
